Traditional silver halide cameras typically display the number of the current frame to be exposed to the user. The user must use this information in conjunction with the number of frames available in the film canister to calculate the number of frames that remain to be exposed. All of this information is never provided to the user in a concise fashion and the number has to be read and understood. Recently introduced Advanced Photographic System ("APS") cameras will provide some assistance in this area by providing a number that corresponds to the number of frames remaining to be exposed. However, the user will have no method for determining the number of frames that he or she has previously exposed. Software has recently become available which allows scrolling through images on a computer platform. For example, the recently available PICTURE DISK software from Eastman Kodak, which is provided to a customer on a diskette along with scanned images from a roll of film, presents a screen in a Microsoft Windows environment with thumbnails of the images, and a vertical scroll bar on the Windows screen which allows a user to scroll through the thumbnails.
The above problem is exacerbated in cameras that provide an electronic review feature. Such cameras typically have a storage medium on which to store captured images as image signals, and a screen on which any previously captured stored images can be reviewed. In such cameras it is desirable not only to indicate to the user the number of frames exposed and the number of frames remaining to be exposed, but also to indicate which frame is currently being viewed on the electronic display. The Casio QV-10 digital camera assists somewhat with this latter problem by numbering the image frames as they are taken and displaying this number over the image during image review. While this tells the user which frame is currently being viewed, the user has no direct way of determining the number of frames left to be exposed and only knows how many frames have been exposed by scrolling to the last image in the image list and reading the number of this image.
In addition, in an electronic digital camera such as the Casio QV-10, it is necessary for a user to review the stored images one by one to reach a particular one to be reviewed. For example, if the user is viewing image 1 and wishes to view image 20, he or she must press a button to advance to the next image at which time image 2 is generated and brought to the screen after about a 2 second delay required for the camera electronics to read and display the stored image. The user must again press the advance button at which time image 3 is generated and brought to the screen after another 2 second delay. This process must be repeated 19 times by the user who wishes to view image 20. This process requires better than 0.5 minute to complete. Such a method of scrolling through the images is therefore relatively time consuming and tedious.
It would be desirable then, to have an electronic camera which stores captured images and which allows a user to relatively rapidly review any desired stored image, and to do so without repetitive actions. It would further be desirable that the user can also readily ascertain the number of images stored and further also the space remaining for storage of further captured images.